<i>Wilmore: I can only say that Mr. Musk, what he says, is absolutely factual. We have no information on that, though, whatsoever; what was offered, what was not offered; who it was offered to, how that process went. That's information that we simply don't have. So I believe him. I don't know all those details, and I don't think any of us really can give you the answer that maybe that you would be hoping for.</i><p>I am so confused.
The <i>current</i> ArsTechnica headline is (as here on HN): <i>Butch Wilmore says Elon Musk is “absolutely factual” on Dragon’s delayed return</i><p>The last part of URL is<p><pre><code> butch-and-suni-send-mixed-messages-on-whether-politics-delayed-their-return
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and <i>Mixed Messages</i> nails it. In the body there is:<p><pre><code> For what it is worth, all of the reporting done by Ars over the last nine months suggests the decision to return Wilmore and Williams this spring was driven by technical reasons and NASA's needs on board the International Space Station, rather than because of politics.
Q. Did politics influence NASA's decision for you to stay longer in space?
Wilmore: From my standpoint, politics is not playing into this at all. From our standpoint, I think that they would agree, we came up prepared to stay long, even though we plan to stay short. That's what we do in human spaceflight.
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In short, Wilmore doesn't believe that politics delayed their return, as was claimed by Musk.<p>The best support from the headline comes from:<p><pre><code> Q. Elon Musk said he made an offer to bring Butch and Suni home last year, but it was denied by the White House. Is this true?
Wilmore: I can only say that Mr. Musk, what he says, is absolutely factual. We have no information on that, though, whatsoever; what was offered, what was not offered; who it was offered to, how that process went. That's information that we simply don't have. So I believe him.
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Wilmore believes that Musk is being factual when Musk asserts he made an offer to bring them back. He skirts any comment on why that offer was not taken up, having earlier stated he doesn't believe politics played a part.<p>Musk makes a lot of public offers .. he offered a submarine that wasn't practical, he offered a 420 weed joke for Twitter and got nailed to the mast with it by the SEC. It's likely factual that he offered to bring back this crew early.<p>It likely wasn't <i>practical</i> for any number of reasons.
> Wilmore: I can tell you at the outset, all of us have the utmost respect for Mr. Musk, and obviously, respect and admiration for our president of the United States, Donald Trump. We appreciate them. We appreciate all that they do for us, for human space flight, for our nation. The words they said, politics, I mean, that's part of life. We understand that. And there's an important reason why we have a political system, a political system that we do have, and we're behind it 100 percent.<p>Wow, USA is indeed turning into a caricature of the USSR.<p>I was very young then but still almost having a de ja vu reading these lines.